Today's lawmakers not looking forward

To the editor:

Being an 82-year-old senior citizen, I find it truly distressing to observe the rapid erosion of our very precepts of governing and of being governed; namely the government actions that have so effectively provided the comforts and security of a homogenous country such as our founders intended.

It seems that the emergence of the, "me first" generation of some 30-plus years ago began an indifference toward forward thinking and planning to build upon the necessities of future generations.

An attitude of not wanting to provide the means to build　national infrastructure in an area of the U.S. not in a person’s immediate community has regretfully permeated our society. Additionally, our younger legislators seem to be lacking any concept of U.S. history prior to their birth. Their actions are proof as we listen to their utter disdain for the actual　programs that have built this great nation.

An example might be the Boulder Dam project. The dam construction was begun in the Depression year of 1930 providing jobs for 21,000 workers for five years. That was the short-term effect. In the long term, although the dam would distribute water to the farmers and citizens of only a few western states, the wisdom was that because of water supply, the whole Southwest would be put to work providing farm produce and newly enabled factory goods throughout the country.

Another might be the Tennessee Valley Authority begun by President Roosevelt in the Depression year 1933 with the request to Congress to create," a corporation clothed with the power of government, but possessed of the flexibility and initiative of a private enterprise."

Not only electricity producing dams were built but a river and environmental projects improved living for a vast area of the east-central U.S.

In 1942 the TVA started the largest hydropower construction in U.S. history to provide electricity for new aluminum factories to provide aluminum for wartime aircraft. This project produced 28,000 jobs.

The TVA analogy duplicates the Boulder Dam as enduring projects that helped build our America and continue even after 80 years.

What have　our　legislators not　learned? During a serious depression our government scraped together, through taxes and borrowing, enough funding to provide living sustenance for tens of thousands of workers during a period when jobs were scarce. They ignore history.

My Dad, with his small auto repair business, once told me, "You have to spend money to make money."

Jack Stevic
Harlingen
Via the Internet